INTERVIEW WITH JIM KING
BY ROGER KAYE NOVEMBER 24, 2003
MR. KAYE: This is a telephonic interview with retired FWS Biologist and Pilot Jim
King who is in Juneau. It is November 24, 2003. It is conducted by Roger Kaye in
Fairbanks. The subject of our discussion today is the creation of the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge. Jim, thanks for talking with me today. To begin, tell us about your
position with the FWS in the mid 1950’s.
MR. KING: I started working for FWS in 1951. I think we were called Enforcement
Agents then. Actually, I started as a Stream Guard under Hogar Larsen in Cook Inlet. I
moved to Fairbanks in the fall of 1951 as an Agent Trainee. We had several titles that
came along, but we wound up as Game Management Agents. That was the normal title of
people in the management and enforcement divisions. Alaska was kind of separate from
the rest of the country at that time so we didn’t have to take civil service exams or
anything like that. They just hired people that they felt were appropriate.
MR. KAYE: So in 1956, I know you flew John Buckley up to Last Lake to visit the
Muries during their expedition there. What was your position in 1956?
MR. KING: I guess it was Game Management Agent. We didn’t actually land in the
lake. We landed in the Sheenjek River, which was pretty close to where the Muries were
camped. The lake was a little ways away, but that’s where Keith Harrington had landed.
He was a Wein pilot that took them up there initially.
MR. KAYE: Can you tell me a little bit about that trip and why you went up and what
you knew about the effort that the Muries were involved in there?
MR. KING: We had done flying at that time with the university wildlife unit people and
the wildlife unit that had started in 1950, I guess. It had been pretty new. The first
leader was Doc Cosley and then he began Dean of Students. Then John Buckley took
over. They were kind of learning the country. Ray Wolford, who was the Agent in
Charge in Fairbanks, helped them out as much as possible and we did flying for them
periodically when they requested it. Buckley wanted to go up there. I don’t remember
exactly the details but I assume that he talked to me or to Wolford to arrange it. So it was
set, I flew him up in a Piper Pacer as I recall.
MR. KAYE: So did he visit with the Muries then? Were they discussing strategy? Do
you recall what they were discussing?
MR. KING: Well, we went to their camp and Marty and Olaus were there. There was a
Doctor there. Maybe Brina Kessell was there. George Schaller was off somewhere. He
was staying there but he was off hiking that day. As a matter of fact, I think when we
first got there Olaus was off somewhere. He had been making track casts and other things
around the lake. He came back. But I don’t remember any great details about the
conservation regarding the Arctic Refuge. It was actually the south slope of the Brooks
Range and it isn’t a very arctic-like place. It’s more like the interior arboreal forest.
MR. KAYE: When did you move to Juneau?
MR. KING: I came here in 1964.
MR. KAYE: I know that you knew Clarence Rhode. Maybe you could tell me a little bit
about what you knew of Clarence and what your association with him was?
MR. KING: Clarence was the Regional Director. He was really a vibrant and dynamic
person. He just had a way of dealing with everybody that was really appealing.
Although he did have enemies because he was a very powerful person.
MR. KAYE: What kind of enemies would Clarence have?
MR. KING: He was Regional Director at a time when Commercial Fisheries was part of
the region. Clarence had no college degrees of any sort that I know of. I don’t think he
had ever been to college. Here he was in charge of Ph. D. Fisheries people. I think there
was some tension over that. I can’t remember the year, but it was some time in the 1950s
when Commercial Fisheries was split off. There was that, and then Clarence and Albert
Day who was the Director in Washington. They were very, I don’t know if I’d say close,
but Clarence was able to get what he wanted from Albert Day. Day was one of the great
Directors of the Service. I think there was some resentment on the part of other Regional
Directors that Clarence could get what he wanted out of the Director and they sometimes
couldn’t. Those were the two things I was aware of. Of course there was some political
criticism by Alaska lawyers and politicians. He had a way of just riding over all of that
kind of stuff.
MR. KAYE: Do you know how he might have gotten along with a fellow named
Anderson who was a Commissioner of Fish and Game, who was very much against the
Arctic Proposal?
MR. KING: Well, Clarence Anderson was hired as the Director of the Territorial
Department of Fisheries somewhere in the mid 1950s. He wasn’t anywhere near the
strong personality that Rhodes was. At that time, one of the things I remember was that
the Territory established a fishing stamp that people were supposed to buy and attach to
their fishing license. It cost a few bucks, but not much. There was a question as to
whether it was legal or not. So the way it was handled was that people were advised to
buy this thing by territorial authorities but the Territory didn’t have any wildlife
enforcement people. We of course were checking hunting and fishing licenses and we
were told not to take any cases to court regarding that stamp. That was one of the things
that brought politics into the picture. Fish and Wildlife was accused of, and I think
maybe Anderson was involved in this sort of thing, of not supporting the Department
because we weren’t supporting the stamp from which they got money. It started to get
political then, and Ernest Greuning was Governor. He was working on Statehood and one
of his gimmicks was federal mismanagement of the wildlife and fish resources. He said
that the Territory needed to manage it’s own resources because the federal government
had done such a bad job. This was just politics. It was true that the salmon were down
because I think primarily during World War II there were hardly any FWS people around.
Producing food was part of the war effort. A lot of the fishermen were fishing up the
creeks and indulging in practices that were illegalized. There were huge salmon catches
during the war and they couldn’t be sustained. Greuning made a big deal out of that sort
of thing. He attacked Ira Gabrielson who was the Director and a national figure before
Day. Greuning really made some hard accusations against Gabrielson. Gabrielson came
to Alaska every summer for a number of years. The interesting thing is that as the
Director, he spent his summers bird watching, which resulted in this monumental book
with Frederick Lincoln. The excuse for Gabrielson to come here was that he went to
Fisheries Hearings. With fish not producing as much, and then there was the fish trap
thing going on; Greuning used Gabrielson as a target.
Clarence Anderson came in to this arena. It seems like he picked up on this thing
of federal mismanagement. He would preach that when Rhodes wasn’t around. But he
didn’t dare say anything like that when Rhodes was present. A lot of the things were not
true. I went to a Tanana Valley Sportsmen’s meeting one time when Anderson was there
giving a talk on what the Department of Fish was doing and how they were going to
develop a Department of Game after Statehood. I don’t remember exactly the points he
made, but while he was speaking Rhodes and Ray Wolford walked in. You could almost
see Anderson’s face drop! He finished his talk and walked right out the door. Then, the
group were pretty much supporters of Rhodes. They asked him what he thought about
what Anderson had been saying. He gave a little talk about why he thought certain things
wouldn’t work. But they had this funny relationship. I didn’t know too much about it.
But I did know that as a guy in the field we got some of the pay off on this federal
mismanagement stuff.
MR. KAYE: It’s interesting that you suggested that Rhodes got along pretty well with
the Sportsmen’s groups. Was that your impression? Was he well connected, or well
liked by the Outdoor Council or the sportsmen’s organizations?
MR. KING: Yes, I think very much so. One more comment on that controversy over
federal mismanagement; after Statehood, the first Governor, who was Governor Egan
wrote a letter to the Game Commissioners complementing them on the good condition
that the wildlife recourses were in when the new State took over. It just canceled all of
this nonsense about federal mismanagement. This letter did that. On the sportsmen’s
end of things, I think it was around 1945 that the Territorial Sportsmen’s group organized
in Juneau. They were an exceedingly active bunch. The FWS people in Juneau became
pretty active in that organization. A lot of them were officers in it. One of the things
that they did fairly soon was that they started having this Salmon Derby. You’ve
probably heard of the Juneau Salmon Derby. It produced a lot of money. The Territorial
Sportsmen’s group always had a lot of money to spend on things. They built cabins for
the Forest Service rentals and established a scholarship fund for kids that has produced
over a million dollars over the years. A lot of kids have had the benefit of those
Territorial Sportsmen scholarships, including one of my daughters. They were just riding
high, that bunch, and they commented on game laws. There were hearings then, as now,
about game laws. They testified that the way the laws were set up was that the
Commission would meet in Juneau every winter. Of course, the Regional Director was
the executive officer and a member of the Game Commission. Then were four other
members who were not government employees from each of the judicial divisions. They
would have this meeting in Juneau and all of the Agents and Refuge Managers would
come in. Pretty much all of the FWS people would come in. The Agents would talk
about the condition of wildlife in their districts and changes that were needed in the game
laws. There weren’t many Biologists involved. Biologists started coming in about 1948.
The Agents in the districts had been doing a pretty good job of restoring moose and
furbearers that had been sorely depleted before the Alaska Game Law began in 1925. The
Game Commission would talk with the Agents about needed changes and the public could
testify about things that they wanted. Then, the Commission would come up with knew
regulations that the Secretary of the Interior would adopt and would become law. That’s
the way that worked. The Territorial Sportsmen were right here in Juneau and they were
always attending these Commission meetings and they knew all of the Commission
members. Some of the Commissioners were pretty powerful people. I always think of
the guy in Petersburg, Earl Ohmer. He had a cannery in Petersburg and he was kind of a
strong personality. He was the guy that got involved when there were all kinds of
military conflicts that went on over hunting during World War II. Earl Ohmer would talk
to General Nathan Twining who was a pretty powerful General; and he called him “Son”!
Andy Simon and he and I were friends. He had a lot of connections with powerful people
from taking them hunting. This was the kind of the field. In the early 1950s, Bud Boddie
was the prime mover. He was the second President of the Territorial Sportsmen. I am
not sure, he was here right from the start, and so he probably was involved with the
President. He was an extremely good speaker. He could control a room full of people
just beautifully and get whatever he wanted out of them. He was a really close friend of
Clarence Rhodes. Boddie was the one that was really the impetus behind the Alaska
Sportsmen’s Council, which was affiliated with the National Wildlife Federation. The
NWF was started by Ding Darling as a federation of sportsmen’s clubs. I don’t think
Darling felt that it had worked out as well as he had hoped in his lifetime. But the bright
spot was Alaska, where the Territorial Sportsmen and the other really lively group at that
time was the Tanana Valley Sportsmen in Fairbanks. So Boddie came back and forth to
Fairbanks fairly regularly there for a few years. I knew him.
MR. KAYE: Where was Boddie coming from philosophically? He was very influential
in the Arctic Refuge issue. Where did he come from?
MR. KING: He grew up in Idaho. Other than that I don’t know much about his youth.
But he was a really avid sportsman in the classic term. He loved to hunt and fish. He
was really interested in game laws and game conservation. When he came to Alaska I
know he had a trawling boat for a while. And he had a cabin on Douglas Island where he
did his deer hunting in the fall. I went over there deer hunting with him one year. He was
one of these guys that was really into hunting and fishing. A couple of other players in
what was going on at this time would be Dave Spencer, who was the Chief of Refuges and
a pilot. Spencer was a very quite person and didn’t attract very much attention in groups
or at meetings. He had two things that were really important to him. One was that he
had been a student of Aldo Leopold’s and he’d also been a friend of Olaus Murie’s. He
was involved with Olaus in Wyoming. The other person was the Assistant Regional
Director; Urban Nelson, who we called Pete Nelson. Pete was also a student of Aldo
Leopold’s. I don’t think there was much sense in Alaska of a wilderness philosophy that
was used to support the ANWR. The other important player in this was George Collins.
I think it was him, with the Park Service who had….he was familiar with the writings of
Robert Marshall who had first suggested a National Park for everything north of the
Yukon, as a wilderness area back in the 1930s. Collins, in the 1950s was some kind of a
planning person in San Francisco. He was a very personable guy. He knew everybody
and talked to everybody.
MR. KAYE: Did you know George Collins?
MR. KING: I did.
MR. KAYE: Tell me more about your impressions of him. He was with the Park
Service. Did that make hunters and sportsmen leery of what he was proposing?
MR. KING: Everybody liked him. But his proposal was for a Park for the Arctic. The
Sportsmen’s Council could not go along with that because there would be no hunting in
the Park. I don’t think it was an adversarial thing at that point. The players which were
the people that I just talked about agreed that they probably couldn’t sell a National Park
up there in Alaska, but they could sell a Refuge. As far as I know, George Collins
couldn’t object to that. He was an interesting guy, and a really dynamic person. I guess
he knew everybody in Washington, but at that time, I was just a young guy. I think I met
him when I worked for the McKinley Park in 1950. Then, after I got to be working as an
Agent in Fairbanks, just as a district Game Warden. But I remember running into him on
the street and here and there. He always just wanted to talk was just a very pleasant
person to be around.
MR. KAYE: George Collins in his personal journal was very critical of wolf control
program that Clarence Rhodes carried out in northeast Alaska in what became the Arctic
Refuge. Did you ever talk to either Rhodes or Collins about that, or the disagreement that
they obviously had over wolf control?
MR. KING: That was a big issue at the time, and always had been. When I worked in
Fairbanks trapping was still very important in a lot of areas. The trappers really
supported wolf control because a lot of the trappers weren’t all that well educated or well
organized and a lot of them couldn’t deal with the wolves that could wipe out their fur
catch. They were constantly appealing to the FWS for reduction in wolves. The people
in Petersburg were always worried about the wolves there that were wiping out deer. The
reindeer people who in the 1950s were concentrated around Kotzebue and Selawik
couldn’t deal with the wolves. The wolf program had a lot of support. The Territorial
Legislature maintained wolf bounties. This didn’t fit with the kind of philosophy that
came from Bob Marshall and Aldo Leopold. But it certainly was something that Rhodes
had to deal with.
MR. KAYE: Do you think Rhodes was personally invested in it, or was just doing it
because it was popular and expected of him?
MR. KING: The Sportsmen supported the wolf control too. It supposedly produced
more moose. I would assume that Rhodes was just fulfilling the popular demand. He
was hearing from sportsmen’s groups and native groups.
MR. KAYE: Would you have any impression whether he was actually a “wolf hater” as
some people thought he really was? Or was he just politically required to carry out these
programs?
MR. KING: Oh, I don’t think he was a wolf hater! He was trying to administer a
wildlife agency that depended, like all government organizations on a certain amount of
public good will. He was responding to that. He didn’t have that kind of personal
prejudice. If he had a personal prejudice, it would be against the violators of the game
laws and that sort of thing. He was interested in management of wildlife. There were
things that were considered important then than that were not involved any more like…
Oh, I think it must have welled up in the 1930s; the prejudice against killing cows and doe
deer. That was just considered basic information; you didn’t shoot the females. There
were things like that going on. Another thing was that there used to be a closer along the
roads, a quarter of a mile back from the road, just because it was considered poor
sportsmanship to stand on the road and shoot things.
MR. KAYE: Do you thing Clarence was one of those interested in sportsmanship for the
more traditional or more venerated hunting tradition and trying to keep that alive?
MR. KING: Yeah, I think so. I would say that he felt that hunting and fishing is a sport
and should be dealt with as a sport.
MR. KAYE: Would you say that this was a motivation of the Territorial Sportsmen’s
group?
MR. KING: Oh, very much.
MR. KAYE: Were they concerned, do you think, about the degradation of the tradition
of hunting like you read about going on in the 1950s with the advent of technology and so
on? Was that a concern that they had?
MR. KING: Oh, very much. I think things like the prohibition of things like using
helicopters came right out of the sportsmen’s groups.
MR. KAYE: This is very interesting. I see a lot of reference to that. What was the
issue, or concern? Did it come from the military use of choppers? Was the worry that
this would further depreciate hunting if they started to be used for that?
MR. KING: Well, I think it was just that there were getting to be helicopters around and
it was considered that it would be un-sportsmanlike to go in and land next to animals and
shoot them down. There should be a fair chase. The Boone and Crockett Club used to
talk a lot about fair chase. There was a big element of that in the sportsmen’s clubs. I
think that the Sportsmen’s Council; I can’t remember exactly when the prohibition of
helicopters happened, but it didn’t result from the abuse of helicopters, that I know of.
Helicopters were extremely expensive and the public wasn’t using them. The government
and military were using them a little bit. That was the sportsmen sort of getting ahead of
the game in saying that we needed to stop this before it starts.
MR. KAYE: Interesting, that a kind of visionary thing.
MR. KING: Yeah, and there was a lot of that going on. And the wolf thing was sort of
mixed up in that some. I don’t remember feeling that anybody really hated wolves except
the trappers and the reindeer people. The sportsmen felt that they were a trophy animal
although they were furbearers. I don’t remember there being any feeling that wolves had
to be exterminated. They had to be managed like any other wildlife resource. I think that
would be Rhodes’ feeling on it. If you were going to manage for a surplus for humans
you needed to reduce the predation.
MR. KAYE: I don’t know if you have a sense of this, but Collins brought a certain
idealism to the Arctic Refuge proposal. Part of it was based on the new ecology-based
environmental perspective. I wonder if Clarence shared that view, or how he might have
responded to the idealism that Collins had for this place.
MR. KING: I don’t remember people vocalizing much about the idealism of Bob
Marshall. He was better known for his book on Arctic Village, and Wiseman there.
There wasn’t a whole lot of the idealism that was expressed by Muir and people who
followed. There was a strong sense of what a wonderful place Alaska was and how
exciting it was to be able to get out and do things, and to have animals. I think one of the
things that Bud Boddie used to say was that he didn’t want to see Alaska spoiled the
way that Idaho had been spoiled. I am not sure what he was referring to there. That was
sort of in the back of a lot of people’s heads. They didn’t want Alaska treated the way
other states had treated their natural areas and wildlife. They didn’t want to see things
torn up. It was a protective thing. I don’t remember vocalizing on the wilderness
philosophy and that sort of thing.
MR. KAYE: Okay, let’s go to the 1959 hearings that were held. Senator Bartlett held
them in Alaska, including one in Juneau. I think you attended those didn’t you?
MR. KING: Yeah, I went to one hearing that Bartlett had.
MR. KAYE: What was the tone of it. You told me a little bit last year about your
impression of Bartlett and what he was trying to get out of this hearing, and the approach
that he took to it.
MR. KING: There were a number of younger people expressing the kind of idealism that
you mention. These were kind of new thoughts in Alaska. Bartlett was without saying
so; he managed to kind of discourage that sort of thing as if it were not relevant. He
encouraged people that were talking about developing the resources up there. I remember
Warren Taylor, who was kind of an old bearcat from Fairbanks; he was a self taught
lawyer, and President of the Senator and head of the Bar Association. He was a pretty
political figure. He testified about how this wasn’t needed and how this was a silly idea.
All of these kids were just preaching a batch of foolishness. I don’t remember the words,
but that was the implication. Bartlett kind of drew him out, and some other Chamber of
Commerce types and he didn’t really draw out the opposition. Then, here came Bud
Boddie. He was an Assembly member, and Mayor of Juneau at times. He was really
well known and his work with the Sportsmen’s Council was well known. I think Bartlett
knew him personally. Boddie testified that this was a good idea. It may have been the
first time that Bartlett heard anybody who was part of the establishment as it was then,
and an important public figure speak in favor of it. There was another element about
Boddie. At some point, Clarence Rhode and Dave Spencer had begun working to get
Izembek Lagoon and Yukon Delta set up at refuges.
MR. KAYE: Was that the Kuskokwim Refuge proposal?
MR. KING: Yes. Dave Spencer had done a lot of work on writing reports and
proposals.
(Side B)
MR. KAYE: Go ahead.
MR. KING: Rhodes, and Boddie and Collins and these were important Americans.
They didn’t have any trouble getting a good proposal introduced in Congress. I don’t
know just who they were working with then. Bills were introducing several times for
making the Yukon Delta, under various names, and the Izembek Lagoon. They never got
anywhere in Congress. They may have been working on that before Collins really got
pushing on the Arctic. They may have been involved with him in deciding that the Arctic
may be better as a refuge than as a park. So the three places, the Arctic, the Yukon Delta
and the Isembek kind of turned into a package that they were supporting. Boddie and the
Sportsmen’s Council supported the three proposals. They took positions and wrote
letters and endorsed it. They turned into kind of a package. Finally, when Congress
wouldn’t do anything they went to Eisenhower’s Secretary of the Interior and he
designated these areas by Administrative Order. But everybody was in agreement that it
would be way better to do it through Congress than by Executive Order, in part because
the Yukon Delta had been a refuge going back to 1909 I think. It was established by
Teddy Roosevelt, but it was abolished by Warren Harding. With the same flick of the
wrist, an administration could abolish these areas.
MR. KAYE: Right, and that was of course a concern with ANWR, that it could suffer
the same fate if it wasn’t established by legislation. Do you know if Boddie ever intended
to come up to the Arctic for hunting of fishing? He was so strongly interested in a place
that he lived so far from. What was his personal motivation? What it just to know that
this place was here, or that he might use it, or what?
MR. KING: I think it was because he was part of this team of… I don’t know that he
ever thought he might go there. But he may have been up there. Rhodes used to go up
there flying around looking for Caribou up there. Boddie may have gone up there. He
always had some people from Juneau with him when he was up there. He would have
seen it I think. Of course Rhodes’ last trip was related to the refuge.
MR. KAYE: I wanted to ask you about that because I think you were involved in the
search; but first…Dave Spencer, you talked about him. Did he bring wilderness thinking
to the FWS in Alaska? And if so, what influence might he have had on Rhodes? Do you
think that might be related to why the establishing order for Arctic had wilderness listed
in it?
MR. KING: The wilderness thing, that wasn’t an idealistic thing. Wilderness was
established by Congress, so this was another gimmick. If they could get Congress to
establish wilderness, then future executives couldn’t abolish it. I think that was one of
the things that Spencer and Rhodes worked on. They wanted to get the Aleutians set up
as wilderness. Of course the Aleutians were badly abused during World War II. Then
along came the Atomic Energy Commission. The Aleutians were vulnerable. When I first
came to Fairbanks there was a strong feeling that heard feeling that was heard frequently
expressed in the press and by politicians for getting rid of the Kodiak Bear Refuge and
turning that over to the ranchers. Also, get rid of the Moose Range and turn that over to
the homesteaders and get rid of some of the Aleutian Refuge and turn them over to sheep
farmers. These refuges were interfering with progress in Alaska. I think that’s where the
impetus came from; not from idealism but from the practical sense that to protect these
areas, they’d be safer if they were declared wilderness by Congress.
MR. KAYE: So would you say that Spencer was the one who brought this thinking or
refined it for FWS in Alaska?
MR. KING: Yeah, a lot of these things were more practical administration than idealism.
The idea was that we wanted these refuges for wildlife, and we didn’t want the military or
other wheeler-dealers tearing them up. Spencer did have his background with Leopold
and Olaus Murie, so did Pete Nelson, although I never heard Nelson talking about that
sort of thing. He was right there in the office with Rhodes all of the time here in Juneau.
John Buckley was another of the players. He was the Wildlife Unit Leader. I think those
people that I mentioned were the ones that I knew who were kind of involved with
getting refuges set up.
MR. KAYE: Do you know why Arctic became an Arctic Range as opposed to a refuge?
Was there any discussion about that terminology?
MR. KING: The Kenai was a range, and I think Kodiak was a range, I’m not sure. But
the range concept kind of endorsed the idea that these places were open to hunting, I
think. They weren’t sanctuaries; they were ranges for these species. It was more for the
protection of habitat than for providing sanctuary for big game.
MR. KAYE: So it would be more comfortable for a sportsman to support it I guess.
MR. KING: Yeah.
MR. KAYE: Do you know of Clarence Rhodes was a member of the Territorial
Sportsmen himself?
MR. KING: I don’t know for sure. I think perhaps he was. I know he was involved
with them a lot. Maury Kelly was the Predator Agent through the period of the 1950s.
He was a very active member of the Territorial Sportsmen. Ed Zigler who was the FWS
Engineer at the time, and Ray Nevin who was the administrative officer.
MR. KAYE: How about yourself Jim, were you involved?
MR. KING: I didn’t live here then, I lived in Fairbanks during the 1950s. I guess I was a
member of the Tanana Sportsmen’s Association. But I think that the Game Wardens, or
Enforcement Agents tended to be a little standoffish than the other types like the
Biologists and the Refuge Managers. They didn’t have this feeling that it might interfere
with their other dealings with people. I think maybe I was a member, but I didn’t really
participate.
MR. KAYE: The last thing I wanted to talk to you about was Clarence Rhodes’ search.
Clarence disappeared in the Arctic Range area in 1958. You were involved in that search
weren’t you?
MR. KING: Yeah. Actually, I was at Tetlin, banding that summer. I came in to vote
because that was the fall when they had the elections about Statehood. I was way up at
Last Tetlin. I took my little skiff and went chugging down through Tetlin Lake and on
down to Tanana Bridge. I drove on down to Fairbanks. I had a car waiting there. I got to
the office and there was all of this activity going on. This was on about the third or
fourth day that Rhodes had been missing. They had just that day called the military. At
that time, we didn’t use the FAA for flight plans. The FWS had a hundred and fifty or so
radio stations of the air. A lot of the wives had radios in their kitchens and logged calls
from airplanes. There were boats as sea. But it was all HF radio.
MR. KAYE: Had Clarence set up that system for FWS?
MR. KING: Yeah. He was in charge. He guy that did it was Hans Wicca. They got
truckloads of surplus radios from the military. Wicca made them work. I know that the
radios we had in our cars came out of airplanes. They weighed about a hundred pounds
or more! Wicca got those mounted in our trucks. We used Chevy Suburbans then. We
could sit in those cars when conditions were good and talk to people all over Alaska. We
could talk to airplanes and the boats at sea.
MR. KAYE: So you went to Fairbanks and learned that Clarence was missing?
MR. KING: Yeah. The first day or two FWS pilots had gone up there to look around.
Nobody was quite sure where he had been headed. They had some ideas. Then on about
the third day BLM sent their planes up there. Then the military was called in. A fellow
who was a Major came to the FWS office and looked around. He saw the radio there and
saw that Fairbanks was working fine, and had contacts with all of the planes. I think
there were five or six searching. There were people with vehicles standing by who could
go get stuff. This Major decided that he was going to run the search. Once you called the
military, they were in charge. And he decided that he was going to run it out of the little
office there on Airport Way. So he went back to the Base and got all of his maps and
took over one of the offices. He was running the search from there and at about the time
that he got, or maybe the next day, the head of the Alaska Command in Anchorage who
had known Clarence decided that he was going to come up and see what was going on.
The Base Commander at Ladd Field didn’t know what was going on and suddenly
discovered that the commanding General was coming up to look at something that was
going on in town, and not on the Base. This funny sequence had been happening all day
long where first some Captain came out and told the Major he had to get back to the Base.
The Major said that he couldn’t because he had ten airplanes in the air and that he
couldn’t move. He said he had to stay there and tend to business. The Captain went
back and reported. Then a Lieutenant Colonel came. He got the same message. Then the
full Colonel came. When I got there, I guess I went and voted. And I guess I was hanging
around and watching what was going on and reading my mail. I had been out for a while.
Here comes the General. I can’t remember what his name was. Could it have been
Twining? It may have been somebody else. He barged into the office and said, “I want
to make it clear right away; I’m not here to run this thing, I am here to help!” That was a
little endorsement of this Major. The Major stayed there for a whole month!
MR. KAYE: What was your role on the search?
MR. KING: At that time I had quit FWS and was going to college at Washington State. I
came back to band ducks that summer, so I was a temporary employee. I had to go back
and get my stuff, and I had a young guy working for me at Tetlin. I had to clean up my
operation there. When I came back, they were looking for observers. I didn’t fly any of
the airplanes then, but I flew with Tom Wardley and Al Kropt and Tony Schultz. We
did a bunch of flying with a Wien airplane. I can’t remember who else I was with, but I
was up there for about two weeks.
MR. KAYE: Were you in what is now the Refuge?
MR. KING: The way searches are run, they block off the countryside and the blocks are
each assigned to different pilots. I stayed at Bettles for a while. We were flying out of
there. Then we stayed at Umiat for a while, and flew out of the. Everybody was kind of
in the act. The Major was the one who was managing the maps and coordinating things.
For a few days I was in Fairbanks. But I remember that for that first day that he was
being very careful of all of these civilian pilots. He didn’t know what his authority was
going to be. I remember him asking, “Well, could we get together at seven o’clock in the
morning?” He was very apologetic to get everybody out so early. Well, everybody that
was there wasn’t thinking about the hour. They were thinking about getting up and
finding this airplane. He didn’t have any trouble getting people out at seven in the
morning. He was great, that guy.
MR. KAYE: That’s interesting. Well gosh Jim, that’s all the questions I have. Is there
anything you’d like to add for the record on the Arctic Refuge? Is there anything that I
didn’t ask that I should have? Do you have any other comments?
MR. KING: I don’t know. I think there was a lot of local support for it that didn’t
really come out. It was a little different that the sort of things that you documented so
well last year at the history meeting. It was people looking forward and asking what kind
of Alaska did they want to have. Then, as now, it turned out that a lot more people were
interested in retaining the natural values. In fact, the Statehood vote passed, but the only
real opposition to it was not necessarily from idealists; it was from the old-timers and the
trappers. They were afraid that when Statehood came along that live would suddenly
become complicated. The things that they enjoyed about Alaska would be lost.
I am glad that you asked about Boddie. He was a very interesting person and had
a lot to do with various regulations and activities that welled up from through the
Sportsmen’s Council. I don’t know where you’d have to go to get records of that
Council. They might have them there in Fairbanks at the Tanana Valley Sportsmen.
They started out very early and built a lodge.
MR. KAYE: It’s still there.
MR. KING: The Territorial Sportsmen never did that. I don’t know, but their records
had a way of disappearing. Maybe the Tanana Valley group kept better tract of theirs!
There other guys there who might still be around. Bud Weasey, is he still there?
MR. KAYE: I don’t know if he is. Chuck Gray was involved at the time. I have taped
him. But there aren’t too many left. Glen Despain is out at Shoshanna. I am hoping to
try to get out there visit with him.
MR. KING: You might try and find out about Bud Weasey. Do you know him?
MR. KAYE: I know of him.
MR. KING: Chuck would know. He was active in those days in the sportsmen. I don’t
know all that many here. But I could give you the information on Boddie’s son. He is
still here.
MR. KAYE: Okay, well I’ll tell you what; I’ll catch that in a minute from you. I am
going to turn the recorder off. Gosh, I want to thank you for this information!

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INTERVIEW WITH JIM KING
BY ROGER KAYE NOVEMBER 24, 2003
MR. KAYE: This is a telephonic interview with retired FWS Biologist and Pilot Jim
King who is in Juneau. It is November 24, 2003. It is conducted by Roger Kaye in
Fairbanks. The subject of our discussion today is the creation of the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge. Jim, thanks for talking with me today. To begin, tell us about your
position with the FWS in the mid 1950’s.
MR. KING: I started working for FWS in 1951. I think we were called Enforcement
Agents then. Actually, I started as a Stream Guard under Hogar Larsen in Cook Inlet. I
moved to Fairbanks in the fall of 1951 as an Agent Trainee. We had several titles that
came along, but we wound up as Game Management Agents. That was the normal title of
people in the management and enforcement divisions. Alaska was kind of separate from
the rest of the country at that time so we didn’t have to take civil service exams or
anything like that. They just hired people that they felt were appropriate.
MR. KAYE: So in 1956, I know you flew John Buckley up to Last Lake to visit the
Muries during their expedition there. What was your position in 1956?
MR. KING: I guess it was Game Management Agent. We didn’t actually land in the
lake. We landed in the Sheenjek River, which was pretty close to where the Muries were
camped. The lake was a little ways away, but that’s where Keith Harrington had landed.
He was a Wein pilot that took them up there initially.
MR. KAYE: Can you tell me a little bit about that trip and why you went up and what
you knew about the effort that the Muries were involved in there?
MR. KING: We had done flying at that time with the university wildlife unit people and
the wildlife unit that had started in 1950, I guess. It had been pretty new. The first
leader was Doc Cosley and then he began Dean of Students. Then John Buckley took
over. They were kind of learning the country. Ray Wolford, who was the Agent in
Charge in Fairbanks, helped them out as much as possible and we did flying for them
periodically when they requested it. Buckley wanted to go up there. I don’t remember
exactly the details but I assume that he talked to me or to Wolford to arrange it. So it was
set, I flew him up in a Piper Pacer as I recall.
MR. KAYE: So did he visit with the Muries then? Were they discussing strategy? Do
you recall what they were discussing?
MR. KING: Well, we went to their camp and Marty and Olaus were there. There was a
Doctor there. Maybe Brina Kessell was there. George Schaller was off somewhere. He
was staying there but he was off hiking that day. As a matter of fact, I think when we
first got there Olaus was off somewhere. He had been making track casts and other things
around the lake. He came back. But I don’t remember any great details about the
conservation regarding the Arctic Refuge. It was actually the south slope of the Brooks
Range and it isn’t a very arctic-like place. It’s more like the interior arboreal forest.
MR. KAYE: When did you move to Juneau?
MR. KING: I came here in 1964.
MR. KAYE: I know that you knew Clarence Rhode. Maybe you could tell me a little bit
about what you knew of Clarence and what your association with him was?
MR. KING: Clarence was the Regional Director. He was really a vibrant and dynamic
person. He just had a way of dealing with everybody that was really appealing.
Although he did have enemies because he was a very powerful person.
MR. KAYE: What kind of enemies would Clarence have?
MR. KING: He was Regional Director at a time when Commercial Fisheries was part of
the region. Clarence had no college degrees of any sort that I know of. I don’t think he
had ever been to college. Here he was in charge of Ph. D. Fisheries people. I think there
was some tension over that. I can’t remember the year, but it was some time in the 1950s
when Commercial Fisheries was split off. There was that, and then Clarence and Albert
Day who was the Director in Washington. They were very, I don’t know if I’d say close,
but Clarence was able to get what he wanted from Albert Day. Day was one of the great
Directors of the Service. I think there was some resentment on the part of other Regional
Directors that Clarence could get what he wanted out of the Director and they sometimes
couldn’t. Those were the two things I was aware of. Of course there was some political
criticism by Alaska lawyers and politicians. He had a way of just riding over all of that
kind of stuff.
MR. KAYE: Do you know how he might have gotten along with a fellow named
Anderson who was a Commissioner of Fish and Game, who was very much against the
Arctic Proposal?
MR. KING: Well, Clarence Anderson was hired as the Director of the Territorial
Department of Fisheries somewhere in the mid 1950s. He wasn’t anywhere near the
strong personality that Rhodes was. At that time, one of the things I remember was that
the Territory established a fishing stamp that people were supposed to buy and attach to
their fishing license. It cost a few bucks, but not much. There was a question as to
whether it was legal or not. So the way it was handled was that people were advised to
buy this thing by territorial authorities but the Territory didn’t have any wildlife
enforcement people. We of course were checking hunting and fishing licenses and we
were told not to take any cases to court regarding that stamp. That was one of the things
that brought politics into the picture. Fish and Wildlife was accused of, and I think
maybe Anderson was involved in this sort of thing, of not supporting the Department
because we weren’t supporting the stamp from which they got money. It started to get
political then, and Ernest Greuning was Governor. He was working on Statehood and one
of his gimmicks was federal mismanagement of the wildlife and fish resources. He said
that the Territory needed to manage it’s own resources because the federal government
had done such a bad job. This was just politics. It was true that the salmon were down
because I think primarily during World War II there were hardly any FWS people around.
Producing food was part of the war effort. A lot of the fishermen were fishing up the
creeks and indulging in practices that were illegalized. There were huge salmon catches
during the war and they couldn’t be sustained. Greuning made a big deal out of that sort
of thing. He attacked Ira Gabrielson who was the Director and a national figure before
Day. Greuning really made some hard accusations against Gabrielson. Gabrielson came
to Alaska every summer for a number of years. The interesting thing is that as the
Director, he spent his summers bird watching, which resulted in this monumental book
with Frederick Lincoln. The excuse for Gabrielson to come here was that he went to
Fisheries Hearings. With fish not producing as much, and then there was the fish trap
thing going on; Greuning used Gabrielson as a target.
Clarence Anderson came in to this arena. It seems like he picked up on this thing
of federal mismanagement. He would preach that when Rhodes wasn’t around. But he
didn’t dare say anything like that when Rhodes was present. A lot of the things were not
true. I went to a Tanana Valley Sportsmen’s meeting one time when Anderson was there
giving a talk on what the Department of Fish was doing and how they were going to
develop a Department of Game after Statehood. I don’t remember exactly the points he
made, but while he was speaking Rhodes and Ray Wolford walked in. You could almost
see Anderson’s face drop! He finished his talk and walked right out the door. Then, the
group were pretty much supporters of Rhodes. They asked him what he thought about
what Anderson had been saying. He gave a little talk about why he thought certain things
wouldn’t work. But they had this funny relationship. I didn’t know too much about it.
But I did know that as a guy in the field we got some of the pay off on this federal
mismanagement stuff.
MR. KAYE: It’s interesting that you suggested that Rhodes got along pretty well with
the Sportsmen’s groups. Was that your impression? Was he well connected, or well
liked by the Outdoor Council or the sportsmen’s organizations?
MR. KING: Yes, I think very much so. One more comment on that controversy over
federal mismanagement; after Statehood, the first Governor, who was Governor Egan
wrote a letter to the Game Commissioners complementing them on the good condition
that the wildlife recourses were in when the new State took over. It just canceled all of
this nonsense about federal mismanagement. This letter did that. On the sportsmen’s
end of things, I think it was around 1945 that the Territorial Sportsmen’s group organized
in Juneau. They were an exceedingly active bunch. The FWS people in Juneau became
pretty active in that organization. A lot of them were officers in it. One of the things
that they did fairly soon was that they started having this Salmon Derby. You’ve
probably heard of the Juneau Salmon Derby. It produced a lot of money. The Territorial
Sportsmen’s group always had a lot of money to spend on things. They built cabins for
the Forest Service rentals and established a scholarship fund for kids that has produced
over a million dollars over the years. A lot of kids have had the benefit of those
Territorial Sportsmen scholarships, including one of my daughters. They were just riding
high, that bunch, and they commented on game laws. There were hearings then, as now,
about game laws. They testified that the way the laws were set up was that the
Commission would meet in Juneau every winter. Of course, the Regional Director was
the executive officer and a member of the Game Commission. Then were four other
members who were not government employees from each of the judicial divisions. They
would have this meeting in Juneau and all of the Agents and Refuge Managers would
come in. Pretty much all of the FWS people would come in. The Agents would talk
about the condition of wildlife in their districts and changes that were needed in the game
laws. There weren’t many Biologists involved. Biologists started coming in about 1948.
The Agents in the districts had been doing a pretty good job of restoring moose and
furbearers that had been sorely depleted before the Alaska Game Law began in 1925. The
Game Commission would talk with the Agents about needed changes and the public could
testify about things that they wanted. Then, the Commission would come up with knew
regulations that the Secretary of the Interior would adopt and would become law. That’s
the way that worked. The Territorial Sportsmen were right here in Juneau and they were
always attending these Commission meetings and they knew all of the Commission
members. Some of the Commissioners were pretty powerful people. I always think of
the guy in Petersburg, Earl Ohmer. He had a cannery in Petersburg and he was kind of a
strong personality. He was the guy that got involved when there were all kinds of
military conflicts that went on over hunting during World War II. Earl Ohmer would talk
to General Nathan Twining who was a pretty powerful General; and he called him “Son”!
Andy Simon and he and I were friends. He had a lot of connections with powerful people
from taking them hunting. This was the kind of the field. In the early 1950s, Bud Boddie
was the prime mover. He was the second President of the Territorial Sportsmen. I am
not sure, he was here right from the start, and so he probably was involved with the
President. He was an extremely good speaker. He could control a room full of people
just beautifully and get whatever he wanted out of them. He was a really close friend of
Clarence Rhodes. Boddie was the one that was really the impetus behind the Alaska
Sportsmen’s Council, which was affiliated with the National Wildlife Federation. The
NWF was started by Ding Darling as a federation of sportsmen’s clubs. I don’t think
Darling felt that it had worked out as well as he had hoped in his lifetime. But the bright
spot was Alaska, where the Territorial Sportsmen and the other really lively group at that
time was the Tanana Valley Sportsmen in Fairbanks. So Boddie came back and forth to
Fairbanks fairly regularly there for a few years. I knew him.
MR. KAYE: Where was Boddie coming from philosophically? He was very influential
in the Arctic Refuge issue. Where did he come from?
MR. KING: He grew up in Idaho. Other than that I don’t know much about his youth.
But he was a really avid sportsman in the classic term. He loved to hunt and fish. He
was really interested in game laws and game conservation. When he came to Alaska I
know he had a trawling boat for a while. And he had a cabin on Douglas Island where he
did his deer hunting in the fall. I went over there deer hunting with him one year. He was
one of these guys that was really into hunting and fishing. A couple of other players in
what was going on at this time would be Dave Spencer, who was the Chief of Refuges and
a pilot. Spencer was a very quite person and didn’t attract very much attention in groups
or at meetings. He had two things that were really important to him. One was that he
had been a student of Aldo Leopold’s and he’d also been a friend of Olaus Murie’s. He
was involved with Olaus in Wyoming. The other person was the Assistant Regional
Director; Urban Nelson, who we called Pete Nelson. Pete was also a student of Aldo
Leopold’s. I don’t think there was much sense in Alaska of a wilderness philosophy that
was used to support the ANWR. The other important player in this was George Collins.
I think it was him, with the Park Service who had….he was familiar with the writings of
Robert Marshall who had first suggested a National Park for everything north of the
Yukon, as a wilderness area back in the 1930s. Collins, in the 1950s was some kind of a
planning person in San Francisco. He was a very personable guy. He knew everybody
and talked to everybody.
MR. KAYE: Did you know George Collins?
MR. KING: I did.
MR. KAYE: Tell me more about your impressions of him. He was with the Park
Service. Did that make hunters and sportsmen leery of what he was proposing?
MR. KING: Everybody liked him. But his proposal was for a Park for the Arctic. The
Sportsmen’s Council could not go along with that because there would be no hunting in
the Park. I don’t think it was an adversarial thing at that point. The players which were
the people that I just talked about agreed that they probably couldn’t sell a National Park
up there in Alaska, but they could sell a Refuge. As far as I know, George Collins
couldn’t object to that. He was an interesting guy, and a really dynamic person. I guess
he knew everybody in Washington, but at that time, I was just a young guy. I think I met
him when I worked for the McKinley Park in 1950. Then, after I got to be working as an
Agent in Fairbanks, just as a district Game Warden. But I remember running into him on
the street and here and there. He always just wanted to talk was just a very pleasant
person to be around.
MR. KAYE: George Collins in his personal journal was very critical of wolf control
program that Clarence Rhodes carried out in northeast Alaska in what became the Arctic
Refuge. Did you ever talk to either Rhodes or Collins about that, or the disagreement that
they obviously had over wolf control?
MR. KING: That was a big issue at the time, and always had been. When I worked in
Fairbanks trapping was still very important in a lot of areas. The trappers really
supported wolf control because a lot of the trappers weren’t all that well educated or well
organized and a lot of them couldn’t deal with the wolves that could wipe out their fur
catch. They were constantly appealing to the FWS for reduction in wolves. The people
in Petersburg were always worried about the wolves there that were wiping out deer. The
reindeer people who in the 1950s were concentrated around Kotzebue and Selawik
couldn’t deal with the wolves. The wolf program had a lot of support. The Territorial
Legislature maintained wolf bounties. This didn’t fit with the kind of philosophy that
came from Bob Marshall and Aldo Leopold. But it certainly was something that Rhodes
had to deal with.
MR. KAYE: Do you think Rhodes was personally invested in it, or was just doing it
because it was popular and expected of him?
MR. KING: The Sportsmen supported the wolf control too. It supposedly produced
more moose. I would assume that Rhodes was just fulfilling the popular demand. He
was hearing from sportsmen’s groups and native groups.
MR. KAYE: Would you have any impression whether he was actually a “wolf hater” as
some people thought he really was? Or was he just politically required to carry out these
programs?
MR. KING: Oh, I don’t think he was a wolf hater! He was trying to administer a
wildlife agency that depended, like all government organizations on a certain amount of
public good will. He was responding to that. He didn’t have that kind of personal
prejudice. If he had a personal prejudice, it would be against the violators of the game
laws and that sort of thing. He was interested in management of wildlife. There were
things that were considered important then than that were not involved any more like…
Oh, I think it must have welled up in the 1930s; the prejudice against killing cows and doe
deer. That was just considered basic information; you didn’t shoot the females. There
were things like that going on. Another thing was that there used to be a closer along the
roads, a quarter of a mile back from the road, just because it was considered poor
sportsmanship to stand on the road and shoot things.
MR. KAYE: Do you thing Clarence was one of those interested in sportsmanship for the
more traditional or more venerated hunting tradition and trying to keep that alive?
MR. KING: Yeah, I think so. I would say that he felt that hunting and fishing is a sport
and should be dealt with as a sport.
MR. KAYE: Would you say that this was a motivation of the Territorial Sportsmen’s
group?
MR. KING: Oh, very much.
MR. KAYE: Were they concerned, do you think, about the degradation of the tradition
of hunting like you read about going on in the 1950s with the advent of technology and so
on? Was that a concern that they had?
MR. KING: Oh, very much. I think things like the prohibition of things like using
helicopters came right out of the sportsmen’s groups.
MR. KAYE: This is very interesting. I see a lot of reference to that. What was the
issue, or concern? Did it come from the military use of choppers? Was the worry that
this would further depreciate hunting if they started to be used for that?
MR. KING: Well, I think it was just that there were getting to be helicopters around and
it was considered that it would be un-sportsmanlike to go in and land next to animals and
shoot them down. There should be a fair chase. The Boone and Crockett Club used to
talk a lot about fair chase. There was a big element of that in the sportsmen’s clubs. I
think that the Sportsmen’s Council; I can’t remember exactly when the prohibition of
helicopters happened, but it didn’t result from the abuse of helicopters, that I know of.
Helicopters were extremely expensive and the public wasn’t using them. The government
and military were using them a little bit. That was the sportsmen sort of getting ahead of
the game in saying that we needed to stop this before it starts.
MR. KAYE: Interesting, that a kind of visionary thing.
MR. KING: Yeah, and there was a lot of that going on. And the wolf thing was sort of
mixed up in that some. I don’t remember feeling that anybody really hated wolves except
the trappers and the reindeer people. The sportsmen felt that they were a trophy animal
although they were furbearers. I don’t remember there being any feeling that wolves had
to be exterminated. They had to be managed like any other wildlife resource. I think that
would be Rhodes’ feeling on it. If you were going to manage for a surplus for humans
you needed to reduce the predation.
MR. KAYE: I don’t know if you have a sense of this, but Collins brought a certain
idealism to the Arctic Refuge proposal. Part of it was based on the new ecology-based
environmental perspective. I wonder if Clarence shared that view, or how he might have
responded to the idealism that Collins had for this place.
MR. KING: I don’t remember people vocalizing much about the idealism of Bob
Marshall. He was better known for his book on Arctic Village, and Wiseman there.
There wasn’t a whole lot of the idealism that was expressed by Muir and people who
followed. There was a strong sense of what a wonderful place Alaska was and how
exciting it was to be able to get out and do things, and to have animals. I think one of the
things that Bud Boddie used to say was that he didn’t want to see Alaska spoiled the
way that Idaho had been spoiled. I am not sure what he was referring to there. That was
sort of in the back of a lot of people’s heads. They didn’t want Alaska treated the way
other states had treated their natural areas and wildlife. They didn’t want to see things
torn up. It was a protective thing. I don’t remember vocalizing on the wilderness
philosophy and that sort of thing.
MR. KAYE: Okay, let’s go to the 1959 hearings that were held. Senator Bartlett held
them in Alaska, including one in Juneau. I think you attended those didn’t you?
MR. KING: Yeah, I went to one hearing that Bartlett had.
MR. KAYE: What was the tone of it. You told me a little bit last year about your
impression of Bartlett and what he was trying to get out of this hearing, and the approach
that he took to it.
MR. KING: There were a number of younger people expressing the kind of idealism that
you mention. These were kind of new thoughts in Alaska. Bartlett was without saying
so; he managed to kind of discourage that sort of thing as if it were not relevant. He
encouraged people that were talking about developing the resources up there. I remember
Warren Taylor, who was kind of an old bearcat from Fairbanks; he was a self taught
lawyer, and President of the Senator and head of the Bar Association. He was a pretty
political figure. He testified about how this wasn’t needed and how this was a silly idea.
All of these kids were just preaching a batch of foolishness. I don’t remember the words,
but that was the implication. Bartlett kind of drew him out, and some other Chamber of
Commerce types and he didn’t really draw out the opposition. Then, here came Bud
Boddie. He was an Assembly member, and Mayor of Juneau at times. He was really
well known and his work with the Sportsmen’s Council was well known. I think Bartlett
knew him personally. Boddie testified that this was a good idea. It may have been the
first time that Bartlett heard anybody who was part of the establishment as it was then,
and an important public figure speak in favor of it. There was another element about
Boddie. At some point, Clarence Rhode and Dave Spencer had begun working to get
Izembek Lagoon and Yukon Delta set up at refuges.
MR. KAYE: Was that the Kuskokwim Refuge proposal?
MR. KING: Yes. Dave Spencer had done a lot of work on writing reports and
proposals.
(Side B)
MR. KAYE: Go ahead.
MR. KING: Rhodes, and Boddie and Collins and these were important Americans.
They didn’t have any trouble getting a good proposal introduced in Congress. I don’t
know just who they were working with then. Bills were introducing several times for
making the Yukon Delta, under various names, and the Izembek Lagoon. They never got
anywhere in Congress. They may have been working on that before Collins really got
pushing on the Arctic. They may have been involved with him in deciding that the Arctic
may be better as a refuge than as a park. So the three places, the Arctic, the Yukon Delta
and the Isembek kind of turned into a package that they were supporting. Boddie and the
Sportsmen’s Council supported the three proposals. They took positions and wrote
letters and endorsed it. They turned into kind of a package. Finally, when Congress
wouldn’t do anything they went to Eisenhower’s Secretary of the Interior and he
designated these areas by Administrative Order. But everybody was in agreement that it
would be way better to do it through Congress than by Executive Order, in part because
the Yukon Delta had been a refuge going back to 1909 I think. It was established by
Teddy Roosevelt, but it was abolished by Warren Harding. With the same flick of the
wrist, an administration could abolish these areas.
MR. KAYE: Right, and that was of course a concern with ANWR, that it could suffer
the same fate if it wasn’t established by legislation. Do you know if Boddie ever intended
to come up to the Arctic for hunting of fishing? He was so strongly interested in a place
that he lived so far from. What was his personal motivation? What it just to know that
this place was here, or that he might use it, or what?
MR. KING: I think it was because he was part of this team of… I don’t know that he
ever thought he might go there. But he may have been up there. Rhodes used to go up
there flying around looking for Caribou up there. Boddie may have gone up there. He
always had some people from Juneau with him when he was up there. He would have
seen it I think. Of course Rhodes’ last trip was related to the refuge.
MR. KAYE: I wanted to ask you about that because I think you were involved in the
search; but first…Dave Spencer, you talked about him. Did he bring wilderness thinking
to the FWS in Alaska? And if so, what influence might he have had on Rhodes? Do you
think that might be related to why the establishing order for Arctic had wilderness listed
in it?
MR. KING: The wilderness thing, that wasn’t an idealistic thing. Wilderness was
established by Congress, so this was another gimmick. If they could get Congress to
establish wilderness, then future executives couldn’t abolish it. I think that was one of
the things that Spencer and Rhodes worked on. They wanted to get the Aleutians set up
as wilderness. Of course the Aleutians were badly abused during World War II. Then
along came the Atomic Energy Commission. The Aleutians were vulnerable. When I first
came to Fairbanks there was a strong feeling that heard feeling that was heard frequently
expressed in the press and by politicians for getting rid of the Kodiak Bear Refuge and
turning that over to the ranchers. Also, get rid of the Moose Range and turn that over to
the homesteaders and get rid of some of the Aleutian Refuge and turn them over to sheep
farmers. These refuges were interfering with progress in Alaska. I think that’s where the
impetus came from; not from idealism but from the practical sense that to protect these
areas, they’d be safer if they were declared wilderness by Congress.
MR. KAYE: So would you say that Spencer was the one who brought this thinking or
refined it for FWS in Alaska?
MR. KING: Yeah, a lot of these things were more practical administration than idealism.
The idea was that we wanted these refuges for wildlife, and we didn’t want the military or
other wheeler-dealers tearing them up. Spencer did have his background with Leopold
and Olaus Murie, so did Pete Nelson, although I never heard Nelson talking about that
sort of thing. He was right there in the office with Rhodes all of the time here in Juneau.
John Buckley was another of the players. He was the Wildlife Unit Leader. I think those
people that I mentioned were the ones that I knew who were kind of involved with
getting refuges set up.
MR. KAYE: Do you know why Arctic became an Arctic Range as opposed to a refuge?
Was there any discussion about that terminology?
MR. KING: The Kenai was a range, and I think Kodiak was a range, I’m not sure. But
the range concept kind of endorsed the idea that these places were open to hunting, I
think. They weren’t sanctuaries; they were ranges for these species. It was more for the
protection of habitat than for providing sanctuary for big game.
MR. KAYE: So it would be more comfortable for a sportsman to support it I guess.
MR. KING: Yeah.
MR. KAYE: Do you know of Clarence Rhodes was a member of the Territorial
Sportsmen himself?
MR. KING: I don’t know for sure. I think perhaps he was. I know he was involved
with them a lot. Maury Kelly was the Predator Agent through the period of the 1950s.
He was a very active member of the Territorial Sportsmen. Ed Zigler who was the FWS
Engineer at the time, and Ray Nevin who was the administrative officer.
MR. KAYE: How about yourself Jim, were you involved?
MR. KING: I didn’t live here then, I lived in Fairbanks during the 1950s. I guess I was a
member of the Tanana Sportsmen’s Association. But I think that the Game Wardens, or
Enforcement Agents tended to be a little standoffish than the other types like the
Biologists and the Refuge Managers. They didn’t have this feeling that it might interfere
with their other dealings with people. I think maybe I was a member, but I didn’t really
participate.
MR. KAYE: The last thing I wanted to talk to you about was Clarence Rhodes’ search.
Clarence disappeared in the Arctic Range area in 1958. You were involved in that search
weren’t you?
MR. KING: Yeah. Actually, I was at Tetlin, banding that summer. I came in to vote
because that was the fall when they had the elections about Statehood. I was way up at
Last Tetlin. I took my little skiff and went chugging down through Tetlin Lake and on
down to Tanana Bridge. I drove on down to Fairbanks. I had a car waiting there. I got to
the office and there was all of this activity going on. This was on about the third or
fourth day that Rhodes had been missing. They had just that day called the military. At
that time, we didn’t use the FAA for flight plans. The FWS had a hundred and fifty or so
radio stations of the air. A lot of the wives had radios in their kitchens and logged calls
from airplanes. There were boats as sea. But it was all HF radio.
MR. KAYE: Had Clarence set up that system for FWS?
MR. KING: Yeah. He was in charge. He guy that did it was Hans Wicca. They got
truckloads of surplus radios from the military. Wicca made them work. I know that the
radios we had in our cars came out of airplanes. They weighed about a hundred pounds
or more! Wicca got those mounted in our trucks. We used Chevy Suburbans then. We
could sit in those cars when conditions were good and talk to people all over Alaska. We
could talk to airplanes and the boats at sea.
MR. KAYE: So you went to Fairbanks and learned that Clarence was missing?
MR. KING: Yeah. The first day or two FWS pilots had gone up there to look around.
Nobody was quite sure where he had been headed. They had some ideas. Then on about
the third day BLM sent their planes up there. Then the military was called in. A fellow
who was a Major came to the FWS office and looked around. He saw the radio there and
saw that Fairbanks was working fine, and had contacts with all of the planes. I think
there were five or six searching. There were people with vehicles standing by who could
go get stuff. This Major decided that he was going to run the search. Once you called the
military, they were in charge. And he decided that he was going to run it out of the little
office there on Airport Way. So he went back to the Base and got all of his maps and
took over one of the offices. He was running the search from there and at about the time
that he got, or maybe the next day, the head of the Alaska Command in Anchorage who
had known Clarence decided that he was going to come up and see what was going on.
The Base Commander at Ladd Field didn’t know what was going on and suddenly
discovered that the commanding General was coming up to look at something that was
going on in town, and not on the Base. This funny sequence had been happening all day
long where first some Captain came out and told the Major he had to get back to the Base.
The Major said that he couldn’t because he had ten airplanes in the air and that he
couldn’t move. He said he had to stay there and tend to business. The Captain went
back and reported. Then a Lieutenant Colonel came. He got the same message. Then the
full Colonel came. When I got there, I guess I went and voted. And I guess I was hanging
around and watching what was going on and reading my mail. I had been out for a while.
Here comes the General. I can’t remember what his name was. Could it have been
Twining? It may have been somebody else. He barged into the office and said, “I want
to make it clear right away; I’m not here to run this thing, I am here to help!” That was a
little endorsement of this Major. The Major stayed there for a whole month!
MR. KAYE: What was your role on the search?
MR. KING: At that time I had quit FWS and was going to college at Washington State. I
came back to band ducks that summer, so I was a temporary employee. I had to go back
and get my stuff, and I had a young guy working for me at Tetlin. I had to clean up my
operation there. When I came back, they were looking for observers. I didn’t fly any of
the airplanes then, but I flew with Tom Wardley and Al Kropt and Tony Schultz. We
did a bunch of flying with a Wien airplane. I can’t remember who else I was with, but I
was up there for about two weeks.
MR. KAYE: Were you in what is now the Refuge?
MR. KING: The way searches are run, they block off the countryside and the blocks are
each assigned to different pilots. I stayed at Bettles for a while. We were flying out of
there. Then we stayed at Umiat for a while, and flew out of the. Everybody was kind of
in the act. The Major was the one who was managing the maps and coordinating things.
For a few days I was in Fairbanks. But I remember that for that first day that he was
being very careful of all of these civilian pilots. He didn’t know what his authority was
going to be. I remember him asking, “Well, could we get together at seven o’clock in the
morning?” He was very apologetic to get everybody out so early. Well, everybody that
was there wasn’t thinking about the hour. They were thinking about getting up and
finding this airplane. He didn’t have any trouble getting people out at seven in the
morning. He was great, that guy.
MR. KAYE: That’s interesting. Well gosh Jim, that’s all the questions I have. Is there
anything you’d like to add for the record on the Arctic Refuge? Is there anything that I
didn’t ask that I should have? Do you have any other comments?
MR. KING: I don’t know. I think there was a lot of local support for it that didn’t
really come out. It was a little different that the sort of things that you documented so
well last year at the history meeting. It was people looking forward and asking what kind
of Alaska did they want to have. Then, as now, it turned out that a lot more people were
interested in retaining the natural values. In fact, the Statehood vote passed, but the only
real opposition to it was not necessarily from idealists; it was from the old-timers and the
trappers. They were afraid that when Statehood came along that live would suddenly
become complicated. The things that they enjoyed about Alaska would be lost.
I am glad that you asked about Boddie. He was a very interesting person and had
a lot to do with various regulations and activities that welled up from through the
Sportsmen’s Council. I don’t know where you’d have to go to get records of that
Council. They might have them there in Fairbanks at the Tanana Valley Sportsmen.
They started out very early and built a lodge.
MR. KAYE: It’s still there.
MR. KING: The Territorial Sportsmen never did that. I don’t know, but their records
had a way of disappearing. Maybe the Tanana Valley group kept better tract of theirs!
There other guys there who might still be around. Bud Weasey, is he still there?
MR. KAYE: I don’t know if he is. Chuck Gray was involved at the time. I have taped
him. But there aren’t too many left. Glen Despain is out at Shoshanna. I am hoping to
try to get out there visit with him.
MR. KING: You might try and find out about Bud Weasey. Do you know him?
MR. KAYE: I know of him.
MR. KING: Chuck would know. He was active in those days in the sportsmen. I don’t
know all that many here. But I could give you the information on Boddie’s son. He is
still here.
MR. KAYE: Okay, well I’ll tell you what; I’ll catch that in a minute from you. I am
going to turn the recorder off. Gosh, I want to thank you for this information!